Archive: Mar 2009

Brady sent me a link to a story in the Times Online about a poster put out by the British National Party, a right-wing anti-immigrant political party. Here’s the poster (found at the BNP website):

They’re clearly trying to connect efforts to defend Britain during World War II to the idea of a modern “battle for Britain,” which this time is against immigrants. However, they missed a detail when the chose the image for their poster, according to the Times story:

[The plane] could be clearly identified by its RF marking as belonging to 303 Squadron, an expatriate Polish unit, even though the BNP campaigns against immigration from Eastern Europe.

The BNP claims they knew it all along and did it on purpose; others believe they’re just trying to cover an incident that they find embarrassing.

Regardless, it brings up interesting questions about nationhood and definitions of who can be included in a country’s idea of its history. In the imagining of the BNP, would immigrants’ contributions be erased? Would they be acknowledged, but only as something that was appropriate and welcome in the past? After all, one of the very groups they’re vilifying played a role in defending Britain during the exact era that the BNP is trying to symbolically connect itself to. I suspect they might try to make an argument that the ex-pat Polish fighters were involuntary and temporary refugees that were being protected by Britain during a time of warfare and were in fact fighting to retake their own country, which is different than permanent immigrants who take British jobs and mess up the culture and whatnot, but that’s just a guess.

Of course, this isn’t something unique to the BNP; nativist groups everywhere face the problem of having to erase or explain away the contributions of groups they’re trying to exclude from citizenship.

Thanks for the tip, Brady!

Racism is ingrained in the Midwest; we’ve normalized it. Take, for example, my earlier post on Tony Zirkle, the Hoosier Republican congressional candidate who spoke at a dinner honoring Hitler’s birthday. (He also publicly advocated for racial segregation.) Zirkle lost, of course, but the fact that he had no problem publicly stating his racism – without thinking that others would object – shows just how commonplace overt racism can be here.

One of the best examples is the “U-Washee” in Richmond, Indiana. The laundromat is, literally, built on racist stereotypes of Chinese people and no one gives it a passing glance. It’s 1940’s era cartoon stereotype mascot, what Margaret Cho calls “feng shui hong kong fooey font,” and the extra “ee”s at the end of words in the business’s name and posted notices all combine to form one hellish timewarp into a past America most areas have forgotten but we tend to accept as typical – and no one utters a peep.

Bri a sent in this ad, found in Interview Magazine, and we’d like to know what you think of it:

It reminds me, somewhat, of this post featuring a billboard for Playstation with a black and white woman fighting.

In Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality, Joane Nagel talks about the role that the intersections between ethnicity and sexuality play in nationalist projects–that is, how they are used as groups define who is and isn’t part of the entity defined as “the nation.” Those who are part of the nation are part of “us,” and those outside it are the Other. She brings up the example of Nazi Germany. Clearly ethnicity played a huge part in definitions of nationhood as the Nazis saw it. But as Nagel points out, it went beyond that; individuals were also included or excluded from membership based on other characteristics, including sexuality. Specifically, homosexuals were marked as unworthy of inclusion and were also sent to concentration camps.

This image, found at The Pink Triangle, illustrates the intersection ethnicity and various categories, including sexuality. It shows the various markers Nazis used to identify prisoners.

The bottom row of seven triangles clearly represents different categories of Jews. The fifth column of triangles (they look tan but they were pink) identified homosexuals. The third column (blue) was for immigrants. I believe the first column (red) was for political dissenters, but I’m not certain. We see other specified groups of Jews in the three partly-yellow triangles at the bottom, as well as triangles for Poles and Czechs. I don’t know enough German to figure the others out.

It’s a great example of a nationalist project: we can visibly see here the clear effort to define some groups as Others and the way that both ethnicity and sexuality (and the intersections) can be an important part of that, and even mark individuals as multiply stigmatized.

UPDATE: In comments philoserine and xac offered translations. Here’s xac’s:

[Columns]
red: political
green: professional criminal
blue: emigrant
purple: Jehovah’s Witnesses
pink: homosexual
black: work-shy Reich (not 100% sure wether the meaning here is “rich” or “member of the Third Reich” – more likely the last one though)
black: work-shy
[I thought I read somewhere that black might stand for antisocial, so maybe work-shy was how they defined that?]
[Rows]
1. row (triangles) base colour
2. row: label for reoffenders
3. row: penal camp
4. row: jews
5. row:
yellow triangle/black bordered triangle: jewish race desecrator
red circle with white border: under suspicion to escape
grey ring: ?? prisoner
6. row: left: Example: political jew, reoffender, penal camp
middle: special campaign Wehrmacht (?)
7. row: Pole
Czech

Thanks!

And Zeitzeuge says that “Special campaign Wehrmacht is a deserter from the Wehrmacht.”

Toban B. sent in a link to UkraineDate, a website that lets men find hot Ukrainian women. Two images:

Of course, the site could be targeting men in any part of the world. However, it seems likely that it aims at men in wealthier nations in the West, particularly western Europe, the U.S., and Canada. Incidentally, these are the same regions that are the source of the vast majority of male sex tourists. Immigration from the Ukraine to the U.S. has also increased in the past decade; Ukraine is now in the top 10 nations of origin for immigrants to the U.S., with nearly 23,000 immigrants in 2005. And here in Vegas, the number of women from the Ukraine and Russia found to have been trafficked into the country and forced into prostitution (as well as those who came willingly to work in a range of jobs) is increasing. That’s a bit of rambling, but the point is, women from the former Soviet Union are marketed to men in the West in a number of ways.

As Toban points out, the dating site plays on the exotic qualities often attributed to Ukrainian and Russian women. Toban says, “the Ukranian women are presented as sex objects — and in accordance with certain standards of sex and beauty.” Certainly the site makes it clear that men aren’t supposed to to be interested in these women because of their intellect, personalities, or anything other than their beauty.

It’s a good example of the way that certain nationalities, races, ethnic groups, etc., are exoticized and portrayed as particularly attractive and sexual. In some cases, as with Asian women, part of the attraction is the stereotype that they are submissive and undemanding. I’m not certain, but I don’t think that particular stereotype is applied to Ukrainian and Russian women–in fact, I’ve seen them portrayed as high-maintenance and materialistic…but worth it because they’re hot.

Thanks, Toban!

NEW! Elizabeth C. let us know about a protest against sex tourism in Ukraine, which included slogans such as “Ukraine is not a brothel.”

They did so, however, by adopting PETA’s infamous tactic of using scantily-clad women, which may or may not have helped make their point.

If you’re teaching methods this semester and go over pie charts or proportions, many of your students were raised on Bill Nye, the Science Guy.  They might get a kick out of this:

This one’s for you, Bill!

More fun illustrations for methods classes here and here.

(Found here.)

This website is simply a collection of pictures of women’s breasts.  Not models or actresses, just women.  It is a fantastic way to demonstrate the wide variety of natural body shapes.  Below the jump are a few of the many pictures, with histories, on the website:

“I’m 26 and never been pregnant. Even though my breasts are quite small they’ve had stretchmarks forever, even the smaller one. I sometimes wish they were bigger and perkier and I always wear a padded bra otherwise I feel like my stomach sticks out more than my boobs! But I’m grateful I can sleep on my front and I’ve more or less accepted how I am. I think the human body is always a beautiful thing, even if it’s hard to see our own one that way. ”

“I’m 24 years old and I have never had children. I was very happy with my breasts four years ago till they suddenly sprung from smaller B’s to larger C’s, I had priviously been taking birth control and my doctor said this was all “normal”. I come from a German/Dutch background so I assume it has alot to do with genetics. I have some pretty severe bacne and it often spreads to my chest and breats. As you can see one is larger than the other and these are my areola at their largest. .. I also have LOTS of enlarged pores in my cleavage, stretch marks near my underarms which are only just starting to disappear due to about 20lbs weight loss.”

“I’m a young woman from Athens, Greece that happened to run across your site.  I’m 25 years old, never been pregnant and considered neither slim nor obesse. I do have a couple of extra kilos on me. When I was a teenager my breasts grew rapidly and as a result of that I have fairly visible stretch-marks. I do sports and weight-lifting and maybe that has caused my breasts to be slightly pointing outwards. My right breast seems to be placed a bit lower on my chest, seeming shaggier that the left (in my opinion). A couple of years ago my breasts started growing (for no apparent reason-yet painfully) and from cup C I went to DD.”

“My breasts have always been small, some days I love them!! And some other times, I hate them!!! What I liked the least was the hair I had on my areolas. I’m getting laser hair removal now and it makes me feel a bit more comfortable about myself. I guess not having a stable relationship didn’t help much.”

“I am a 24 year old of a slim build. The fact that I have hated my breasts since childhood outrages me. I am healthy and beautiful and happy, but I have never looked at my breasts in the mirror without feeling sad. I am angry at a culture that makes women hate the beautiful uniqueness of their bodies, and learning to love my breasts will be a slow process that I am excited to tackle. All of the beautiful breasts on this website make me see how beatiful we all are! Bodies would be so boring if they all looked the same!”

“Hello. I recently found your site and it has made me feel alot better about my breasts. I started to develop breasts at 8 years old and they were small for a while and in just one year I went from an A to a C. I have stretch marks but they have faded. I was mostly worried about my areolas, I don’t think my breasts are done developing so I have learned to accept them how they are. I am 18 years old. I have gained and lost weight on and off my whole life. As you can see my areola is very light and I have blue veins, one which wraps around the left breast areola.”

See also these selections of bellies and vulvas, and this attempt to refigure imperfection.

Also in boobs, see boobs.

And don’t miss this post on how men, also, feel insecure about their “boobs.”

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

A while back Laura M.D. sent us this image from the March issue of Teen Vogue (found at Jezebel):

Really? This is all it takes to have a cross-cultural experience these days? It’s also interesting to me that this is defined as “African-inspired,” because I’ve seen “Asian-inspired” items that have a very similar look (though not the dark-skinned person in a hammock; maybe that’s the African element). We see this a lot in fashion–the attribution of vaguely “ethnic”-looking things to some part of the world, or specific culture, that may or may not be particularly associated with the supposed traditional fashion or artistic style.

If they wanted to talk about this outfit as a global collision, they might have discussed where all the different items (and the materials for them) were manufactured compared to where they are sold and worn.

See other posts on representing Africa, “ethnic” fashion, and more “ethnic” fashion.

UPDATE: In a comment, jfruh says,

Can I just say that one of my very least favorite adjectives is “tribal” (in the top right corner), which seems to be used indiscriminately to refer to any art with the whiff of the primitive about it? Vaguely Polynesian-looking tattoos, vaguely African-sounding drums, etc. It’s bad enough that the political organizational structures of wildly disparate cultures are lumped together under the word “tribe” just because they’re at a smaller scale than modern nation-states; now any art form that resonates at all with any culture perceived as primitive gets labelled tribal as well.